Her Hair
by Charlie'sLostVampire
Summary: No one understood why Natasha Romanoff cut off all her hair. Natasha had no intention of telling anyone, either. Only Clint knew the truth...


The persistent repetition of the same question was driving Natasha mad. Couldn't everyone just let it go? She'd made it through nearly two months of Tony Stark's pestering before she finally snapped and had to resist the urge to pull a gun on him.

"So, Romanoff, why'd you cut your hair-?"

"I didn't!" she'd shouted in his face, and the rest of the Avengers, and Pepper Potts, all looked up with shock at her outburst.

It had started off as a fairly calm night. No crime was currently plaguing the city (for once) so all of them, with the exception of Thor, were gathered in the living room of the renovated Stark Tower for a movie night. Somehow, Pepper had convinced Tony that it should be her turn to pick the movie (most likely with the promise of extremely naughty activities once they were alone), and she'd decided to force all the men in the room to endure sitting through "Hairspray". Bruce didn't seem to mind it, Steve seemed to find it entertaining, and Clint honestly didn't care what they watched. Tony, however, got bored within the first twenty minutes and decided the best way to solve that problem would be to start pestering the redhead seated to Clint's right.

He hadn't expected her to react the way she did.

"Calm down, _Natalie,_ it was just a question…" Tony stated, and she quickly rose from her seat.

"It wasn't _just a question,_" she bristled, clenching her fists. "It's the same _question_ you've asked me for the past two months! Can't you take a damn hint and tell that I _don't want to answer?_"

"What's the big deal?" Tony scoffed, shaking his head. "It's just a bad haircut, Romanoff. It'll grow back."

Shaking her head, Natasha glared at him for a solid minute before turning on her heel and stalking down the hall.

"Natasha!" Clint called when she hurried off, rising to his feet to follow her, resisting the powerful urge to punch the billionaire in the jaw, or maybe even spear him through with one of his arrows.

"What's her problem?" Tony questioned, and Clint gave him a look that perfectly conveyed every bad thing he was thinking about him.

"She didn't cut her hair, asshole," he snapped, and Tony raised an eyebrow. "She was in an accident in the field. She's lucky to be alive."

With that, the archer rushed out of the room after his partner, and Pepper scowled and aimed a harsh kick at Tony's thigh. He yelped with surprise when the pointed toe of her shoe dug into his leg, and he looked over at her with shock.

"What the hell-?!" he shouted, and she kicked him again.

"Don't make me kick something you like a hell of a lot more than your leg," she quipped, and he fell silent. He could care less if Natasha and Legolas were pissed off at him, but Pepper? Pepper being pissed off at him was a problem.

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Natasha had retreated to one of the many spare rooms the group often occupied when they were working in New York, and she'd locked the door behind her. She didn't want to see, or speak to anyone. None of them understood. They hadn't been there that day in Iraq when she stepped on a bombshell. They weren't there when she was rushed to the nearest hospital by SHIELD choppers. They weren't there when she nearly died of blood loss and severe head injury.

They weren't there when she woke up covered in bandages without a single hair on her head.

Pausing in her thoughts as she sat down on the bed, she shook her head. That wasn't _entirely_ true. None of them may have been with her when it all happened, but one of them was there when she woke up…

… . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . … . …

_. Flashback ._

If everyone in the entire building hadn't know exactly why he was there, the hospital wing staff would have likely thought there was something severely wrong with Clint Barton. He was white as a sheet, his heart had to be racing, and he was covered in sweat from having run all the way here from where the helicopter dropped him off.

When the doctors refused to let him into Natasha's room, he'd whipped out his bow and hadn't hesitated a single second at pointing an arrow at his forehead.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll step aside," he stated, and the middle-aged man held his hands up in surrender and slowly stepped out of the way, allowing Clint access to the overly polished hospital room with all its beeping equipment.

When the door swung shut behind him, he felt a lump rise in his throat. That wasn't his Natasha. It _couldn't_ be his Natasha. Nat wouldn't have been clumsy enough to nearly get herself blown up; she'd have found a way to dodge the explosion… She was too brave and too skilled to get herself into a mess like this.

Slowly approaching the bed, he noted that practically her entire body was wrapped in bandages, face included. The only spots that were free of the sterile white material were her eyes, nose, and mouth. There wasn't a single strand of that fiery red hair that he adored in sight. They must have had to cut it off to stitch up the head wound he'd been informed of. Flinching at the thought of how she would feel when she woke up and saw herself, he reached over and took her hand.

For what felt like hours upon hours, Clint just sat there. He sat and held Natasha's hand, gently squeezing her bandaged fingers every now and again. He should never have let her do this alone. He should have told Fury to forget it when he assigned him to the "alien sighting" in New Mexico, because Natasha couldn't go deal with possible terrorists by herself. This was his fault…

"Clint?"

The word was spoken softly, and it sounded like speaking at all had been a struggle, but it was enough to get his attention away from his self-loathing and back to the woman before him.

"Hey, Nat," he replied quietly when he found her eyes on him, forcing a small smile. She didn't return it, and he didn't know if it was because she just didn't want to, or her face hurt so much that she couldn't.

"Where am I…?" she asked hazily, and his smile slipped.

"Top secret SHIELD base in the middle of the Indian Ocean…" he said with a sigh, shaking his head. "They had to fly you here after… it happened. It was the closest place to the location of the incident."

"Incident…?" she questioned weakly, and Clint's face fell even more. Evidently, the head injury had messed with her memory. Maybe it was a good thing… No one deserved to remember something as awful as what she'd been put through.

"You were posted in Iraq," he explained, giving her hand another gentle squeeze, "dealing with terrorists. But… there was an explosion… Nat, you're lucky to be alive."

Her eyes widened a bit at his words, and she shook her head, wincing when she did so. "No… No, that couldn't happen… That couldn't happen to _me_…"

The heart monitor beside the bed began to beep faster as her heart rate picked up, and Clint swallowed roughly. He wasn't good at this kind of stuff, and he didn't want the doctors rushing in and interrupting them…

"Nat, just calm down…" he said softly, lacing her bandaged fingers through his. "You're going to be okay. They said you'll make a full recovery. You're just going to have a little scar…" Making a face of uncertainty, he slowly brought his freehand up to point to the top of his head and a bit to the left. "Right here…"

"But how…?" she asked quietly, frowning when she saw where he was pointing. "They couldn't fix a wound like that. They'd have to shave off all of my…"

Natasha trailed off, her eyes moving away from Clint to stare at the wall, refusing to believe the possibility until she saw it with her own eyes. "Barton, get me a mirror."

"Natasha…"

"A mirror, Clint! Now!"

Her words came out as an order, and he frowned a bit but got to his feet. If she really wanted to see the damage, he'd have no choice but to show her. He knew that the bandages and promises of scars wouldn't bother her; she'd accumulated plenty over the years, and was even proud of some of them. She called them the "good scars", because to her they were a symbol of her growing redemption. But what _would_ bother her was the fact that all of her hair was gone. Through thick and thin, whether it be drop-kicking someone trying to kill the president or eating dinner and plotting her next move, Natasha Romanoff's hair had always been perfect. She took pride in her curls, claiming that their fiery red tone resembled her Russian spirit.

With them gone, she would undoubtedly feel like every piece of the girl she once was had left her forever.

When Clint returned a few moments later, he hesitantly held the mirror out to her, face down. "You're sure you want to do this now?" he asked, and she took it from him and nodded without a word, lifting the heavy object up to stare at her reflection.

She was silent for a long time. Her face grew blank the longer she looked into the mirror, until she finally passed it back to him.

"Thank you," was all she said, and Clint had placed the mirror down on the table beside the bed and taken a seat on the side of the mattress.

"It'll grow back," he assured her in a quiet tone, certain of what was running through her head. "Just as vibrant and beautiful as ever."

She didn't say anything. Neither of them said anything for the rest of that night. Although Natasha never said so out loud, she had never been more grateful than when Clint said that to her, and then proceeded to lie down beside her and hover protectively beside her while she slept.

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"Nat, open the door. _Please,_" Clint urged as he stood outside the room she'd hidden herself in, cursing Stark's insensitivity. The bastard was lucky he hadn't killed him, but from how it sounded when he left Pepper had nearly done so anyway.

It took nearly twenty minutes, but the door finally opened a crack, the only thing visible being a single blue-green eye. "What?" Natasha asked in a tone somewhat unlike her. Had she been crying?

"Let me in," he requested in a tone a bit softer than he'd used before, taking a small step closer. "Come on, Nat…"

Stepping away from the open door, Natasha gave him free rein to enter as she walked back over to the bed, wiping her cheeks of any remaining tears. She shouldn't have let Stark get to her, but she couldn't hold it in anymore. She'd been ready to burst for weeks…

Entering the room slowly with caution, Clint shut the door behind him and walked across the room to take a seat beside her on the bed.

"Don't listen to Stark," he stated, placing a hand on her shoulder as she faced away from him. "You know as well as I do that the guy is just an asshole…"

"I know," she stated in agreement, shaking her head. "I shouldn't have done that but I just…" Shaking her head, Natasha fell silent. She didn't know how to explain what had happened out there; not even to Clint.

"I get it," he assured her, turning her to face him. "I was there, remember?"

"That's _all_ I remember…" she muttered, looking down, and he frowned a bit.

"That's not a bad thing," he tried, shaking his head. "You shouldn't have to remember something that awful happening to you, Natasha. It would mess you up…"

"It already is messing me up, Clint!" she snapped, looking up at him again. "It wouldn't bother me if I _did_ remember! It's _not_ remembering that _does_ bother me."

Frowning, he shook his head with confusion as she tried to explain. "_Why_…?"

Taking a deep breath, she met his eyes with a small frown. "You just don't get it," she said quietly. "If I could remember how I got hurt and why they had to shave off all of my hair, it wouldn't bother me… but I _don't._ I don't remember what happened or why I ended up in that place…"

Staying quiet for a few moments, Clint hesitantly spoke up. "I do get it," he stated, and she furrowed her brow a bit. Guilt began to sink into her stomach as he explained, unable to believe how insensitive she had been.

"I still don't remember any of the shit I did while Loki was controlling me. If I remembered, I could move past it, but I _can't…_"

Natasha watched as he squeezed his eyes shut, clearly struggling to contain the guilty anger that always overwhelmed him when he thought back to those days and all he got was a blank.

Shifting closer to him, she placed a hand on his cheek and shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, brushing her thumb over his cheek until he relaxed enough to open his eyes again, sagging beside her. "I know how you feel about that, and I'm sorry for saying that you didn't know what I was going through…"

Staying where he was, Clint simply relished in her touch before moving to wrap his arms around her, pulling her close. He knew perfectly well that no one really understood the terms of their relationship. _They_ didn't even really understand it. It seemed to shallow to call Natasha something as simple as his "girlfriend"; she was much more than that. He couldn't explain it, but he knew he wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet in his mouth if he ended up in that hospital again and received news worse than he had before. He _needed_ her…

As soon as his arms wound around her, Natasha relaxed and shifted on the bed, pulling her legs up and laying her head against his chest. His arms were really the only place she ever felt safe. For years, when they would go on missions together she'd find herself sneaking into his bed in the hotel room they shared, only relaxing enough to sleep once his arms were around her. Whenever she slept alone, she was always alert and ready to pounce; she blamed her instincts. But she knew that if she was beside Clint, he'd keep her safe. She didn't have to protect herself with him. Maybe it was because he was the reason she was still alive today.

Bringing his hand up, Clint gently parted her hair and looked down at the scar that resided there, knowing it was a permanent painful reminder to the girl he more than just loved that she'd lost the most important thing to her about herself that day; her pride. Shaking his head, he brought his lips down to the spot in a tender kiss, feeling her tense instinctively at the touch before she relaxed again.

"Just as beautiful as ever," he whispered softly as he buried his nose in her hair, and a faint smile pulled at her lips as she clutched his shirt and shifted even closer to him. Anyone else would have told him that they loved him after he said something like that. But "love" just didn't seem like enough.

Natasha knew that Clint knew she loved him, and Clint knew that Natasha knew he loved her. They didn't need to say it out loud; the fact was set in stone in both of their brains, and their hearts.

Assassins don't fall in love. They fall deeper.


End file.
